The Death of Curtis Ingram

On August 2, 1968, Curtis Ingram was beaten over the head by a white trusty, a fellow prisoner supervising work at the Pulaski County Penal Farm. He died of his injuries. Although the official line was that the trusty had defended himself from attack, KOKY disc jockey Bob Broadwater produced two witnesses who said that the trusty had attacked Ingram on the orders of a paid guard. Little Rock black power group Black United Youth held a rally of two hundred people at to protest Ingram’s death. Arkansas National Guardsmen policed the event. Toward the end of the march, conflicts between demonstrators and Guardsmen broke out. A full-scale riot ensued. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller imposed a weekend-long curfew. It took several days for calm to return to the city. The white trusty was convicted of manslaughter. I’m John Kirk, of the UALR History Department, and this has been an Arkansas moment.